Jolene kissed Bella? I picture her kissing Hudson in the hallway, how her lips pouted before parting again. How her eyes shot open and found me.
“No way,” I say as Kris swerves the car through a pile of brown leaves gathered on the side of Tice Place. I press my palm against the door so I won’t crash into it.
“I know, right?” Kris asks, crushing what’s left of her cigarette in the ashtray and shoving it closed. I roll up my window and rub my hands together between my thighs to keep them warm.
“So, for a second, Bella just stands there, lip liner smudged and everything; and Jolene laughs one of her lean-your-head-back laughs, where her wide mouth gets freakishly big. Then, even though she could barely stand up straight two seconds before, Jolene leans into Bella, all mannequin-still, and says, ‘You liked it, didn’t you? You want to do it again.’”
I cross my arms and lean forward in my seat. Did she?
Kris reaches toward the dashboard and cranks up the heat.
“Then Bella starts telling me how Jolene’s treated her like shit before (news flash!) but that this—this!—calling out her mom in the middle of a party was over the line.” Kris turns to me. “Here is the part where you are both impressed and surprised that I did not mention my shed moment, or your afternoon with the ropes, since clearly those were in no way, quote-unquote, over the line.” Kris shakes her head, then looks back at the road and takes a deep breath. “I mean, especially yours, since Bella was part of it.”
“I’m impressed you didn’t mention it,” I tell Kris, my voice as soft as the heat rushing from the vents.
“You should be,” she says, her eyes dead ahead. “Anyway. Bella said that’s when she finally snapped.”
“Bella?” I ask. Bella has a million and one smiles and even more laughs. She’s friends with everyone. She doesn’t snap. Especially not at Jolene.
“Bella,” Kris confirms, steering with her knees so she can reach up, grab a hunk of red curls in each hand, and tighten her ponytail. “Wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t hear it myself.”
“So what happens when Bella snaps?”
“Fantastic question!” Kris says, slapping her hands back onto the wheel with a smile. She’s enjoying this, and her accelerator is feeling it. I grip the handle on the door as we round the corner. We’re almost at Cherokee Court. “Apparently when Bella snaps, she gets serious and spills secrets.”
“What’d she say?” I ask. I slip my hand into my pocket and smooth my thumb over the cool metal of my Zippo.
Kris parks in front of my house, unbuckles her seat belt, and turns her whole body toward me.
“Well, someone’s eager to hear about the weakness of the enemy! But I can’t really blame you. I was too. So, here it is. Apparently, after getting kissed by Jolene and starring in the number one fantasy of every senior guy in the room, Bella announces, in her best stage voice, ‘Look, Jolene. I get it. You’re desperate. Hudson just dumped you, and now you’re looking for someone new. I know I’m the obvious choice, but these lips are taken. I’d tell you to go home to your mom, but she probably ditched you too. Mine might be drunk, but at least she’s here.”
“Hudson,” I say. He didn’t just break up with Jolene; he’d done it that night. No wonder Jolene ended up on that lawn chair with the junior vultures. No wonder she called out for him. Don’t leave. She was slurring and furious in those seconds before she realized it was me on the chair next to her instead of him. I thought she was just drunk. But now I wonder: What was she trying to tell him? It’s me. Who else would she be? And her eyes. Pink and watery. From being wasted? Or could she have been crying?
I flip open the Zippo in my pocket and dig my thumb into the small metal ridges of the flint wheel. Whatever happened between the two of them, I know where she ended up. Alone. And I know Jolene hated going anywhere alone. Especially home.
“Yeah.” Kris pauses. “Apparently he broke up with her right before the bonfire. Figured you might know something about that.” Kris doesn’t mention that I neglected to tell her anything about it. Instead she drums her cigarette-free fingers on the wheel, then starts up again. “Anyway, so now Bella, who’s got her entire makeup arsenal spread out on her vanity, says Jolene puts a hand on her cheek and whispers, ‘Hudson couldn’t keep up with me. You should really shut your mouth when you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
“So Bella shoots back, ‘I know this is my house, and my party, and that you’re going to leave. I don’t need to be treated like this. I don’t need you telling me what to do.’ Then Jolene brings a hand up and brushes Bella’s bangs to the side—and you know how Bella feels about people touching her hair—and says, ‘Then why do you always listen?’ and walks away. We all thought she left, but . . .”
“She passed out on a lawn chair in the back. She was trashed.”
“And here I thought you missed all the fun.”
“I had no idea how she got there, though.” I lift my thumb off the flint wheel. The skin stays indented where I pressed it into the metal. “Wow.”
“I know. Kind of makes you jealous, right?” Kris asks. “Like you wish you’d said it?”
“Yeah,” I lie, turning Bella’s words over in my head.
I don’t need to be treated like this.
The way Jolene treated me—it wasn’t nice. It was ferocious. Protective. Enveloping.
“I’ve been consoling myself with the fact that it wouldn’t have hurt Jolene half as much coming from one of us,” Kris says, “since we’re not friends with her anymore.”
“True,” I say.
I face away from Kris and stare at our neighbor’s lawn across the street. Some patches are thick, lush, bright green. Others are brown, dead, brittle. I wonder what happened to those dry patches, when they lost their nourishment, if they died slowly or all at once.
I click the lighter shut and grab for the door handle; but my palm is sweaty and my fingers are stiff and I can’t grip the slick metal. I wipe my hand on my jeans and try again. This time it gives.
I get out of the car, then turn around and stick my head through the window to say good-bye, but Kris keeps talking.
“I mean, who would have called it? Bella!” Kris tilts a fresh cigarette out of her soft pack and shifts her car back into gear. “I didn’t know she had it in her.”
“Me neither,” I say.
But I wonder if Jolene did. If she knew exactly what Bella would do, like she knew exactly where I’d be when she needed me.
I knew you’d come.
“Time to get back to the big house,” Kris says. “Those college apps aren’t going to write themselves.” She lifts her fingers to her forehead in a mock salute.
I do the same, then step away from the car. Kris pinches her cigarette between her lips and peels into the street.
I watch her leave. Usually she sticks her hand out the window and gives me a wave, or the finger—but today the window stays closed. I can’t see anything but smoke.
CHAPTER 15
I MEAN TO go home. Really, I do—it’s not like I don’t have my own college apps to complete. But when I spot my mom’s silhouette in the kitchen window, I change my mind. She’s not mad at me like my dad, but it’s only because she wants details: why I was late, who I was with. She’s probably dying to comment on my change in clothes too, to tell me whether or not they flatter my body shape. But I can’t do mother-daughter girl talk right now. I still have Bella’s story in my head. I keep trying to make it fit with my memory of the rest of the night: Hudson’s hand on my knee; Jolene’s breath on my neck, sour and alcohol soaked, as I dragged her across Bella’s lawn. But every time I get close, I feel the weight of Jolene again, not on my shoulders, but in my throat and behind my eyes.
So instead of going inside and locking myself in my room, I get in my car. At least in here I can move through town for real. I don’t have to imagine myself on the black lines of a map, driving through divisions, following the same worn paper path over and o
ver again.
I zigzag through the streets as they switch from moss green to pepto pink to egg-yolk yellow to cornflower blue and back again. Eventually the small, wooden houses with faded paint give way to large homes with square lawns and meticulous landscaping. Hudson’s is up ahead, on Arlington Avenue. It looks exactly the same: white brick, manicured lawn, curved slate path, black front door. I stare up at his window and wonder if he’ll think I’m a stalker for showing up like this. Even though it’s his fault. It’s not like I could send him an email or text to let him know I was coming.
Hudson’s front door opens as I step out of my car. I freeze when I see him, but he doesn’t look up. He shoves his hands into his pockets and bows his head. His worn, ink-sided sneakers are silent on the slate path. I want to call out to him, to hear his voice and the things he says about me. But there’s something about seeing him like this, when he thinks no one’s watching. It’s so private.
So I don’t move as he pulls his keys out of his pocket, or when he stops short of his car—a used blue Honda with faded white streaks on the bumpers. At first I think they’re scratches, but then I realize they used to be stickers. Someone tried to scrape them off but couldn’t get them unstuck completely.
I lean back, thinking I should go—he looks so comfortable and sure, so happy to be alone—but my car door isn’t completely closed, and when my full weight falls against it, it lets out a loud click. Hudson’s head turns toward the sound. His face rearranges when he sees me—his eyes ease into a squint, his freckles fall into place, his chin tilts—until he’s someone I know again and not the person he is by himself.
“Covert mission?” he calls out, sliding his keys back into his pocket. They clink together inside his cargo pants as he walks across the street.
“Wouldn’t really be covert if I told you,” I say.
“You’ve got people to protect; I get it,” he says, nodding. He leans in and lifts his eyes to me like someone might be listening. “We better get out of here.” He holds out his hand.
“Good thinking.” I take it. It’s warm and strong. He leads me to his car.
“Ignore the dirt on the floor. And the notebooks. And the old cleats and empty water bottles,” he says, pushing his hair back from his face. “Actually, ignore pretty much everything.”
“Except the company,” I say.
“Right,” Hudson says with a comma-shaped smile. He shuts the door for me and takes his time walking around to the driver’s side. In front of the car, he lifts his eyes to the sky and considers the cloud-covered sun, which is already sinking. When he’s finished, he gets in and revs the engine. “You have anywhere to be?” He slings his arm over my seat and reverses out of the driveway.
I check my watch. “Not until dinner.”
“Good,” Hudson says, taking his arm back. He doesn’t tell me where we’re going, and I don’t ask. My mind races at first—rolling out routes, running through blocks and divisions, reorienting with each turn—but I force myself to stop. I can’t possibly guess. I don’t want to. I settle into my seat.
“Didn’t you have somewhere to be?” I ask. Hudson doesn’t have a cell. He can’t call or text if his plans change. He could have practice, something for the team. Someone could be waiting. Cal. Jolene. I wonder if he knows where she is. If she’s been in touch with him.
“Yeah,” Hudson says, putting his fingers on my knee and spreading them out into a starburst, “but then you came.”
Hudson flips down his visor. Attached to the back is a sleeve of silver discs tucked in black vinyl pockets.
“You’ve really got a thing for CDs,” I say.
Hudson runs his fingers along the curved, shiny edges and shrugs. “Small price to pay for a little privacy.”
“Right,” I say, remembering Hudson’s ban on all things digital and why he stuck to it: What we did . . . it’s not for anybody else.
What they did. Jolene and Hudson. In this car, probably. I lean forward, so my back isn’t touching the seat.
Hudson slips out a disc and guides it into the player without taking his eyes off the road. “Tell me what you think of this,” he says as the first track spins, then begins. I open my mouth, and he laughs. “Once you’ve heard it.”
“Right.” I shut my eyes—so I can’t peek at street signs—and listen.
The speakers thrum with a deep, slow bass, mixed with soft chords from a piano, then a drum kicks in with a light cymbal, marking the rhythm. I keep waiting for words, but none come. The longer I listen, though, the more the instruments sound like people. The saxophone especially, soaring and sliding like it’s crying. It makes me feel like an open-ended question. Unwritten. Ready to spin out in any direction. I grip my seat and open my eyes.
“You like it,” he says.
“I like it,” I tell him.
“Cool,” he says, fighting back a smile. “Thought you would.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
But I must have said the wrong thing. Hudson’s smile fades. The muscles around his mouth tense. He tightens his hold on the steering wheel. And I don’t ask him anything else. I might not know what the problem is, but I know this: Hudson will talk when he’s ready.
I look out the window. The bright white clouds from earlier this afternoon have gone gray. Front porches are lit. Streetlights, cut lawns, and closed-curtained houses go by. The song ends, and a new one begins. It’s different from the last. A deep, somber voice croons over an acoustic guitar.
“My mom made me this CD.” Hudson’s jaw clenches the second he says it, like his mouth is a trap and the words weren’t supposed to get out.
“Oh,” I say. The last time we talked about his mom, on that short call before the manhunt game, Hudson was pained, pleading. I inch my hand over the middle console and slide it onto the gearshift, under his.
“I used to think she was weak. I used to hate her,” he says, swallowing. “I used to think she hated me.”
“No,” I say, squeezing his hand. But he sits up, pulls his hand away. I put mine back in my lap.
“It was the only thing I could come up with. Why else would she leave?” he asks, turning to me. “Why else would you?”
I freeze.
But Hudson continues.
“Then she got into all these things.” He shakes his head. “They were stupid, right? Book clubs. Charities. Traveling. She was busy half the time and gone the other. At first I thought”—he pauses here, blinks a few times, grits his teeth—“I thought she liked being away from me. It made sense. She spent more time traveling than she did in her house across town. But after a while she seemed, I don’t know. Happy. Way happier than she ever seemed with my dad.” Hudson hits his turn signal, and we make a sharp right off Lawrence Avenue and onto Route 22. We head away from Westfield. And in the green glow of neon lights advertising chain restaurants and car sales, Hudson looks at me. His eyes move over my face the way they did in Bella’s basement.
“She left because she needed to. My dad’s a jackass, right? So she stopped taking his bullshit. She left. Just like you.”
His words hit me square in the chest. “Hudson—”
“That’s why I like you,” he says, taking a hand off the wheel and running it along my jaw. “You did the same thing. You left because you needed to. You did what you wanted and didn’t care what people would think. You don’t give a shit.”
I let out a hard breath as his fingers meet my mouth. It reminds me of the park, the blades of grass, the way he laughed. I lower my head until my lips graze his skin, let out my breath along the length of his hand, the inside of his wrist. Kiss it.
The car goes over a small hill, a rise and fall that plunge my stomach in a way that feels familiar, and when I look around I realize why. Hudson took a U-turn off 22, onto a pitch-dark street.
We’re at the reservation.
Trees climb on either side of us, bending over the road like a canopy. Hudson takes back his hand and jerks the wheel to the right. The Honda
shakes and vibrates underneath my feet. I lean forward to look out the window.
The sign says Hangman’s Hill. I didn’t think this section of it actually existed. It’s marked on only one of my maps, so I always assumed it was a trap street—something the mapmaker put in to catch plagiarists.
“Sit back,” Hudson says. Before I can ask why, the street drops out from under us, and for a second the car is suspended, then the front tires hit the ground. Other than a little bit of bouncing, we’re fine. I turn to Hudson, my eyes wide. “Told you,” he says, smirking.
After that I stick myself to the seat. Each time the street bucks beneath us, I hold my breath until the tires hit the ground again.
“There are thirteen,” Hudson says when we reach the intersection at the bottom.
“Guess this isn’t your first time,” I say, my heart still racing.
“First time with someone else in the car,” he says.
He never did this with Jolene. “I’ll take it,” I say, facing away from him. It’s dark enough now that I can see my reflection in the window. I forgot I had my hair down. I let it fall over my eye. The girl in the window stares at me.
Hudson rolls the car to a stop at the foot of the cliffs. After the rush of the thirteen bumps, stopping here feels like sinking.
Hudson kills the engine, cutting off a drum solo on the stereo, and we get out. Gravel crunches beneath our sneakers. We’re on a piece of land that overlooks the town. It’s mostly dirt and rocks—the same place Bella, Kris, Jolene, and I used to park our bikes before heading up the trails. I always assumed it belonged to the house next to it.
“Are we allowed to be here?” I ask, stepping closer to the edge. Hudson stands next to me, the arm of his jacket touching mine.
Underneath Everything Page 11
